Saturday, August 10, 2013

"Wanderlust: Adventures" Developer's Log - 14

Please keep in mind that all of the images in Developer's Logs are
for "Wanderlust: Adventures", a new title being worked on by Yeti Trunk,
and are a Work In Progress; most of them are mockups or early prototypes.

We spent the last week reworking/finishing the Sorcerer class (formally known as the Elementalist). The first thing we wanted to do was get rid of the spell wheel. This has been, by far, the most confusing element for many new players, and we would like to alleviate that initial frustration.

tldr; massive changes to old Elementalist (now Sorcerer) class, new hit and number effects, and new spell icons!

"Will this change make the class less skill based?"
We still want the ranged caster class to require skill - and the Rebirth-Rune System did accommodate this - but we also want to relieve some of the frustrations of people who just wanted to focus on having fun. To that end, we decided to get rid of Rebirth's Rune System and replace it with a simple element 'wheel'. Players can now hold shift to bring up the 4 elements (fire, ice, earth, energy). Left or Right clicking an element will assign that element to the mouse key pressed. This will give players access to a wider range of spells at any given time, requiring skill to successfully utilize them at the right time.

"How will I select and cast the various skill if all I am doing is selecting an element?"
Sorcerers now have to focus on having two elements selected at a time (left and right mouse button). Depending on what mouse key the element is selected on, you can do various spells. To accurately explain this, first I must talk about the new Stances for the Sorcerer.

Magic Stances and how they work:
The Sorcerer has 3 stances that they can freely swap between while holding the shift key: Offensive, Balanced, and Defensive.

Offensive stance sets both mouse clicks to offensive kits.

Balanced stance sets left mouse click to an offensive kit, and the right mouse button to a defensive kit.

Defensive stance sets both mouse buttons to defensive kits. Any buffs the Sorcerer casts on a player will heal them while in this stance.

So, with stances in mind, once you have an element selected you can do a few things. With an offensive kit selected, you can click to shoot a bolt spell, or you can hold it down to charge a power spell (like meteor, chain lightning, etc). While charging, players move a bit slower, so they should try and combo these charges with stuns, freezes, slows, etc. With a defensive kit selected, players can click to cast a defensive spell or buff, and click-drag to draw walls.

So at all times, players of Wanderlust: Adventures will have quick access to 4 spells (instead of 2 like in Rebirth), and can easily swap between stances to accommodate their play style/the battle. In addition to your 4 spells accessible through your mouse keys, holding shift will also activate Magic Shield, which deflects all damage from magic spells, and even reflects projectile spells back towards the caster.

"So what are the current offensive/defensive spells?"
Here is the current list of offensive and defensive spells and what they do.

Offensive Kit:

Fireball, Ice Shard, Spike, and Shock: The basic bolt spells that all players start with. These are easily spammed for quick CC and damage.

Ice Nova: Ice charge ability. Throws several giant ice crystals in the direction. On impact, they burst into a ring of ice, freezing targets.

Boulder: Earth charge ability. Shoots a giant boulder that plows through enemies in a straight line.

Chain Lightning: Energy charge ability. Throws a giant ball of energy. On impact, shocks all enemies in a large radius.

Defensive Kit:

Dragon Breath: Spits a blast of fire in a cone, knocking enemies back and catching them on fire.

Ice Shield: Casts an Ice Shield buff on players in an area. The buff gets removed after 1 hit, but freezes all enemies nearby, reduces damage by a large %, and making the player immune to ice and fire effects.

Rock Ward: Casts a Rock Ward buff on players in an area. Rocks spin around the player. The rocks break on contact with a projectile or enemy, blocking the projectile or damaging the enemy.

Energize: Allows the user to teleport to a specified location, leaving an energy ring on the ground. Has a longer cooldown if the teleport is used, but you can cast the spell without teleporting.

Fire Wall: Creates a wall of fire that catches enemies on fire that pass through it. Any player that walks through the fire gains fire damage buff for the next few hits.

Ice Wall: Creates a giant wall of ice that blocks projectiles and freezes enemies on contact. Any player that walks through the ice gains ice damage buff for the next few hits.

Vine wall: Creates a line of vines. Any enemy that passes through it will be slowed. Any player that walks through the vines gain physical damage buff for the next few hits.

Energy wall: Creates a wall of energy. Any enemy that passes through it will be knocked back. Any player that walks through the energy gains energy damage buff for the next few hits.

So with all that said, with the new stance system, players could dish out massive damage and support their team. Sorcerers will now be able to be a healing/buffing class if there is no Cleric in the game. On that note, we have recently been focusing on introducing an ability to heal for each and every character class; this allows for more variety in team composition and greatly enhances solo play.

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Throughout development of Wanderlust: Adventures, we have addressed several concerns brought forth by players of Wanderlust: Rebirth, one of which was 'too much clutter during combat' or 'I cannot see anything or tell what is going on'. Here is a list of changes we have made to address this particular concern:

Removed the Pow, Slash, Bam, etc. action captions that were on by default in WR.

Made damage numbers almost 50% smaller.

We are re-making all of the spell and hit effects. Instead of using colored, alpha transparency effects, we are going for a crisper, animated pixel look. We feel the color-blending was causing a lot of visual confusion during hectic battles, and the clean, animated pixel look fits much nicer with the game.

No more overhead clouds in-game. Now, only cloud-shadows appear on the ground.

click to enlarge

Finally, I have spent a bunch of this week revamping the spell icons in the game. I am aiming for a more detailed, illustrative look. You can see a few in the picture below:

click to enlarge

This was a long update, but deservedly so since it's been over a month since our last log was published! Until next time!